THE HEADLINE IS EVERYTHING
What did you think another page would look like.
We say Our Planet Is on Fire
And we know what we’re saying.
As the nature of money is illusion
Agreed upon & peoples
Collapse for it & the horrid bullhorn
Yet squawks & the flock’s means
Justify their ends, their redeemer
An idolatry of firearms—
—We know what we mean to say.
Acres of smoke spiral with dust in wet spit
Too thin to be rain. We say we’re on fire.
We say & we say. You & me
Conspicuous, wasteful, surreptitious,
Plundered & exploded. The free sun
A Yin & Yang, full-spectrum.
We say, & we say we say.
Don’t tell me you're unreachable. I see you.
Are you OK. Are you injured.
Are you high. I found your note &
Make nothing out.
You say your planet is torched & we see
What you’re saying.
I’m with you. You don't wanna
Be out there, friend.
This world is bad noise:
Blue & white & red, necks &
Collars & bloods, arguing
College & pro, arguing what
Burns up our noses.
We say we in total burn.
And we don’t want to hear ourselves.
For instance, child & contemporary ancestors
Paraded & rounded in government pens.
Rounded up & split up & filed away.
For instance, we burn. You say,
Those go about their pain & we Go about our other.
And you say you’re getting nowhere & nowhere
Is getting you. For instance, you can read.
We know what you’re saying
The planet being on fire.
We know by ash the size of newspapers.
THE LYRIC IN CRISIS
Middle of the night, euphoria floats
Out & out of joy—
Natural speed & straightforward cocktails
Wane in a swoop of the moon,
That rakish feather in the city’s straw Stetson,
Most dutifully asleep, some still gallivanting
Or hoboing in the ether of holy vision
Blown clear by a front of fiberglass.
I lie back down & watch.
I’ve been waiting & nothing.
Eyes know light even shut, & only shut
Know courage or optimism
Or chemical willpower let go both
Experience & faith.
Night has vanished by its own dark.
I rinse cotton & ash & lye from my tongue.
Get back in bed & slightly dream.
~
The kids stood last night at the police station,
But no violence, not here. I worry
On my own people, while populous forces
Marshal paranoia
Into blood pressure, or rants, or worse, lashings.
Why nostalgia for anarchy.
One night of insomnia isn’t bad.
The world is sleepless anyways.
Your friends, as you remember them, seeds
Contorting into roots. Once before young, now
Aging out of after. What next to think.
One demonstration for mercy
Upstaged by a second
For the overturning of mercy. One for the apocalypse of the righteous.
One for the rights of the regardless.
One for justice as was never.
~
Life is insurmountable
For the pillowheaded moguls, for the lackey lawyers
Of lawyers themselves, for the overlords
Of fiefdoms of industrial hangars,
For the new dead
We still need to say goodbye to.
For the salesboys of salvation.
For the supreme & narcissistic
Weevil. For them pummeled or wasted.
Life is feeble
For the futurist, nostalgic & underemployed,
For the semi-pro gamer turning 13, turning 39.
For the wannabe viral fetishist, christened conduit, lay Mother Superior. For the honeymooner
Back to the sewers. For the glittery
Flower girl all grown up & off
The wagon. For the clown shouting into it,
Put the camera down!
The pharmacist prescribes her own messiah.
A people yet only afoot see their outcome
Mirrored in an HD lens. We go where we mean to.
We put forth. We ask,
Are we hideous—are we
Irrelevant. Are we monsters
But improving—are we
Torpedoed—are we part & parcel—
Are we the worm
Turned & turned around again.
Are we one day able to look back—
Daniel Luévano’s poems have appeared in journals including Fugue and Crab Orchard Review, online at Manzano Mountain Review, Rust + Moth, and Verse, and in the chapbook The Future Called Something O'Clock (Firewheel Editions.) He lives in Fort Collins, Colorado.